[JURIST] A Malaysian judge has ruled that a five-year marriage between two local citizens is void, after finding that the husband is actually a woman, according to a local report [The Star report] on Tuesday. The judge made his ruling after a physician conducted an examination on the husband, concluding
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[JURIST] Russia has appointed a new lead prosecutor to investigate the October 2006 killing [JURIST report] of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya [BBC obituary; JURIST news archive], according to a statement from the Prosecutor General's office [official website, in Russian] Tuesday. Control over the investigation was handed to Sergei Ivanov in
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[JURIST] Washington DC Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and DC Attorney General Linda Singer [official profiles] Tuesday formally appealed a March federal court ruling invalidating the District of Columbia's handgun ban [JURIST report] to the US Supreme Court, setting the stage for the biggest Second Amendment challenge in almost 70 years.
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[JURIST] Belgian prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen said Tuesday that the Church of Scientology [church website] should be classified as a criminal organization after completing a 10-year investigation into the church's activities. Van Espen also recommended that the Church and a dozen of its adherents should face criminal charges of fraud
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[JURIST] Officials in Norway [JURIST news archive] have indicted three men on terrorism-related charges, according to a statement by the national prosecutor [official website, in Norwegian] Tuesday. The three men were indicted for their alleged roles in the September 2006 shooting at an Oslo synagogue and in planning attacks on
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[JURIST] US government secrecy increased in 2006, according to the Secrecy Report Card 2007 [PDF text, PDF; press release] released over the weekend by OpenTheGovernment.org [advocacy website]. The report cited an increased reliance on national security letters (NSL) [CRS backgrounder, PDF; FBI backgrounder] and more frequent assertions of the state
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[JURIST] A Moscow District Court on Tuesday upheld the legality of the city's ban on gay pride parades [JURIST report], ruling that the city's 2007 prohibition against the Moscow Pride [advocacy website] event was legal under Russian law and the European Convention on Human Rights [text] because the government can
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[JURIST] Indonesian prosecutors announced Tuesday the breakdown of court-ordered settlement negotiations [JURIST report] with lawyers representing former Indonesian President Haji Mohammad Suharto [CNN profile]. Prosecutors will instead proceed in court with the government's civil lawsuit [JURIST report] against Suharto for allegedly embezzling $440 million between 1974 and 1998 from the
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[JURIST] Six foreign judges on Fiji's Court of Appeal submitted their resignations Monday, accusing the military government-appointed chief justice Anthony Gates of interfering with the court's functions by not consulting the judges about their availability when arranging sittings. The judges, from Australia and New Zealand, said it was apparent that
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[JURIST] The Appeals Chamber of the Iraqi High Tribunal [official website] on Tuesday upheld the death sentences [JURIST report] of three defendants convicted for their roles in the slaughter of ten of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal campaign [HRW backgrounder]. The defendants, including Saddam Hussein's cousin and former
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[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] on Tuesday released new documents describing crimes committed by US soldiers against civilians [press release; document log] in Iraq and Afghanistan which show a pattern of US troops failing to follow the laws of interrogations and deadly actions, but also a
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[JURIST] Mexican President Felipe Calderon [official website; BBC profile] denounced US immigration policies during his first state of the union address [text] Sunday, promising to fight for the rights of Mexicans living in the US and protesting the "unilateral measures" taken by the US to make "the persecution and humiliating
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[JURIST] The Supreme Court of Israel [official website] Tuesday ordered the Israeli government to redraw the route of its West Bank security barrier [official website; JURIST news archive] near the Palestinian village of Bilin within a "reasonable period." Bilin residents had challenged the construction of the wall on the grounds
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